The cellar light buzzed overhead, casting shadows that trembled like nerves on edge. The scent of must and old wine clung to the air, faintly sour, like broken corks and shattered memories. Maisie wrinkled her nose as she stepped over a crusted stain on the floor, imagining a servant decades ago stumbling drunk, a bottle slipping through their fingers.
Gene exhaled slowly, voice low. "Someone like Silas doesn't disappear. He plays the long game." The words hovered like smoke. Dash stared at the dirt-caked ground, lost in his calculations, while Maisie hugged her arms tightly around her frame, panic rising like bile in her throat.
"I'm horrified," Maisie whispered. "What the White Angels did to Igor, to Mom... how deep their roots go in our family. It's like rot under the floorboards. You don't see it until it's too late." She wanted to scream, to demand an answer from the universe, but all she could do was breathe and hope it didn't all cave in.
"You should be horrified," Gene said flatly. "I was one of them. I saw how the operation works from the inside; it's not an agency. It's a hydra. You kill one head, two grow back. Selene pulls the strings in silence, and Jack breaks things when she's not looking. They don't just kill defectors. They recycle them, turn their corpses into warnings. If they catch us..." She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
Maisie's hands shook. But she straightened her spine, eyes glinting with quiet steel. "Then we can't let them catch us." Her voice still trembled, but now it trembled with resolve.
Gene hesitated, then added, "There's more. I found a file during my last month inside. Hidden, deep, called 'The Immortality Seed.' A serum, maybe. Something that causes the cells to reset. Like they're four years old again. Perfect regeneration. Selene was the project lead." She glanced between them. "If it's real... Selene Marrow may not just be old. She may be immortal."
Dash recoiled. "Immortal?" He blinked rapidly, jaw clenched. "That'd make her over a hundred."
"I know how it sounds," Gene said. "But her name, her signature, keeps showing up. On documents, research logs, and digital footprints. All consistent, all stretching back to the 2020s. And the woman in the photo I found hasn't aged a day."
Maisie's breath caught. Her heart pounded in her ears. A woman frozen in time, breeding a new species, orchestrating mass manipulation, and somehow tied to the family name etched over every door in this cursed estate. The truth felt deeper than any grave.
Gene lowered her voice. "Selene was once a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, back when the world still thought she was curing cancer. Then she disappeared. Wiped from public records. I wouldn't have known she existed if I hadn't hacked into a restricted archive, down in the lowest level of headquarters. She's a ghost. A scientist who vanished... and reemerged as a god."
Dash narrowed his eyes. "Most news from that era was lost in World War III. How'd you even confirm she was real?"
Maisie spoke before Gene could answer. "The Lennox estate has libraries. Preserved ones. I've seen records, encyclopedias, even newspaper clippings. Her name pops up like a glitch in history. Always around moments that matter."
"But Alucards?" Maisie added. "There's no mention of them anywhere. It's like they were erased before they ever existed. Like they were never supposed to be found."
"Exactly," Gene nodded grimly. "And Selene's still there, in that lab, like a spider in the center of her web. No one sees her. She doesn't speak in person. But she never stops working. She doesn't sleep. She builds."
"She's a wild card," Dash muttered. "And Jack's a loaded gun."
Gene shivered. "He's worse than unstable. He thinks he's owed something, like the whole damn world is his birthright. And when he finds out Harry's dead, and Silas is missing..." She looked down at her hands. "I already know what he'll do to me. He made that clear."
Maisie stiffened. "I used to think he was the head of the White Angels. But Selene built it, didn't she? He's just another parasite, pretending to be king."
Gene gave a bitter smile. "Jack doesn't want to lead. He wants to own it. Selene created something he doesn't understand, and I think he resents her for it. He might not admit it, but if she ever loses her grip, he'll burn the whole system down trying to replace her."
Silence thickened around them like smoke. For a moment, no one knew what to say. Until Gene's voice cracked slightly. "We can't win, not unless we're smarter. We need Leo. We need allies. And we need to stop underestimating how deep this all goes."
"What's Leo even doing right now?" Gene asked suddenly, the question jarring in the gloom. "You didn't bring him."
Dash grimaced. "We fought. I might've said some things. About inheritance. About the estate. I didn't mean to push him away, but I think I did."
Maisie sighed, rubbing her temples. "Leo's not like us. He's quieter and keeps his hurt tucked away. But he's still Mom's son. Even if Harry always acted like he wasn't."
"We need him," Gene said simply. "He's smart. Loyal. And if half of what we're facing is true, we need every monster and misfit we can trust to survive it."
Maisie looked at her old friend, really looked this time, and nodded. "Then we find him. Before Jack does. Before Selene."
──✦──
"Let's go get Leo," Maisie said, her voice hushed but steely. The flickering cellar light cast her face in wavering gold, and for a moment, she looked older, like someone who'd been forced to grow up overnight. "We have to put aside the rest. All of it. Or none of us are getting out of this."
Dash nodded, wordless, and the two of them turned from the shadows of the wine cellar. The staircase groaned beneath their feet as they climbed, the old boards straining like bones beneath their weight. Behind them, Gene remained in the darkness, cross-legged beside the stone wall, her expression unreadable.
They crossed the estate in silence, each corridor more hollow than the last. The mansion felt like a mausoleum, echoes of footsteps bouncing between faded oil paintings and broken sconces, the chandeliers overhead swaying ever so slightly in the breathless air. Time seemed frozen here, embalmed in dust and secrets.
They found Leo in the old study of the north wing, sitting at their mother's desk beneath a cracked skylight where the light dripped in like pale blood. Journals lay strewn across the desk, leather-bound volumes, some open, others stacked. His hands moved slowly over the pages, fingertips tracing loops of handwriting like he was trying to decipher a map carved into his past.
He didn't look up when Dash entered. "You're not great at knocking," he muttered without venom.
Dash winced. "Didn't think this could wait."
Maisie hovered by the door, her presence gentle but persistent. "We need you, Leo. All of you."
Dash laid out the situation in clipped bursts: Gene's defection, Igor's footage, the White Angels tightening their noose. Every word felt heavier than the last like stones being placed in Leo's hands.
Leo finally looked up, eyes shadowed. "I saw the footage," he said. "I don't know what state Igor's in, but if he's still out there, then we don't have time to argue."
The desk lamp caught the reflection of something else, resolve. Tired, jagged, but real. "I'm not letting the Angels twist him into something we can't unmake."
Maisie's throat clenched. "Thank you," she whispered, her voice barely carrying. "I knew you'd come."
Leo stood, his body unfolding like a spring wound too tight. "Let's get back to the cellar. We'll do this right. Or not at all."
Back beneath the mansion, the cellar greeted them with the same stale chill, the air damp with mildew and the faint ghost of spilled wine. Gene was still there, leaning against a crate, one eye half-open like a cat in low light.
"That was fast," she said, voice rough. "You must've agreed immediately, huh, Leo?"
He stepped into the room without hesitation. "You risked your life coming here. You didn't have to. That's enough for now."
Gene sat up straighter, the tension in her shoulders easing just a fraction. "I scrubbed the estate's logs," she said. "If I hadn't, Igor's location would've triggered alerts. And they'd be hunting you too, for harboring him."
Leo narrowed his eyes, studying the way a scientist studies something volatile. "I don't trust easy. But I trust actions over promises."
It wasn't forgiveness. But for Gene, it was more than she expected.
Dash folded his arms. "We trust you enough to move forward. That's the best you're getting right now."
Maisie paced a small circle, boots clicking on cold stone. "If we don't find Igor first, someone else will, Selene, Jack... even Silas."
Gene straightened, pulling her comm from her pocket. "There was a breach earlier. Eastern tunnel mouth. It might be him. The signal came from near the old maintenance chamber. No one's used that place in years."
"We prepare like it's the end of the world," Leo said. "Because it might be."
Dash looked at him with something like awe. Leo wasn't the named heir, but he felt like the one. Unshakeable. Unspoken leadership radiated from him like gravity.
They moved quickly. The mansion at night was a haunting dream; every creak of the floorboards, every sigh of wind outside sounded like a warning. They raided the lower pantry, revealing a trapdoor beneath the kitchen tiles that hadn't been opened in decades. Inside were emergency supplies, freeze-dried meals, oxygen tabs, and water packs laced with minerals. Enough for weeks if rationed.
Weapons were next. Gene assembled a small tranq gun from modular parts hidden in her coat lining. Dash reinforced a stun baton with a metal core. Leo packed small, blunt tools, non-lethal, but forceful.
Maisie gathered medical kits. Her hands trembled as she packed them, remembering Igor's wounds, the blood, the way he had looked at her, like he knew her and didn't. That was what scared her most. That she could lose him a second time.
Before dawn, they gathered at the iron gate sealing off the east tunnel path. The air was cold here, thick with condensation and the iron tang of age.
Leo took point. "Maisie, stay behind me and Dash. Gene, watch our backs."
"I've got a tranq," Gene said quietly. "But let's not use it unless we have to."
Maisie nodded, swallowing hard. "I want to talk to him. He knew my voice before. Maybe he still will."
Dash was silent, jaw tight. He remembered the way Igor had moved in that fleeting, terrifying moment in his bedroom. Power wrapped in silence. Controlled chaos. A storm barely restrained.
They stepped into the tunnel, one by one, their lights slicing through the darkness that hadn't seen day in years.
The search had begun.
Not just for Igor.
But for the last remaining sliver of who they all used to be.